Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)

This film is an experimental mix of documentary and fiction. The film crew travels from the Thai countryside to Bangkok, asking the people they encounter along the way to continue a story about a handicapped boy and his teacher. The inspiration for Mysterious Object at Noon was the Surrealist storytelling technique known as Exquisite Corpse, wherein a variety of writers would contribute to an ongoing story one sentence at a time, largely oblivious to what came before. Thai independent filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul used this technique to interview people throughout Thailand, asking them to contribute to the film's evolving story, and, in the process, learning a little bit about their vivid, largely unexamined lives. What emerges is at once a portrait of Thailand's disenfranchised lower classes - farmers, fruit vendors, village performers - and their resulting collective story about a handicapped boy and his tutor, a mysterious woman named Dogfahr.